Iraq War: Bush wants us to cheer for our unending victory

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Here are some hints of things to expect from Bush's address Tuesday on the Iraq War: New Bush drive for support on Iraq by Linda Feldmann Christian Science Monitor 06/27/05.

First of all, he'll be using soldiers as props:

When President Bush addresses the nation Tuesday evening from Fort Bragg, N.C., a tableau of US troops behind him ...

Bush just doesn't make public appearances in front of crowds that might express disapproval.  And he would rather use soldiers as a backdrop than address the nation from the Oval Office.  Much better for Bush the Liberator of Peoples to be surrounded by soldiers. Not that some of the soldiers might not want to tell Bush the Hooder of the Unrighteous a thing or two about how messed up his policies are.  But they won't be in any position to do so, however much some of them may dislike being a political prop for this president.

Already, for the past week, Bush's new emphasis on Iraq has been well rehearsed: The road ahead is tough, and the casualties weigh on him personally, but the US must press ahead. Iraq is moving forward with a new constitution and national elections. Setting a timetable for US withdrawal would only aid the enemy.

On Tuesday, "he will make the point that this is a critical moment in a time of testing," says presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

And, of course, they will go back to trying to make people think that it was Iraq that attacked the US on 9/11:

Administration officials are also bringing back talk of 9/11 in an apparent effort to renew the link in some people's minds between Iraq and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. On the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, part of the administration's argument was that Iraq was the central front in the war on terror. Even if that was debatable at the time, it is less so now, analysts say.

Indeed, Bush now regularly invokes the argument that fighting terrorists in Iraq is keeping the war away from American soil. Terrorism also remains Bush's most popular issue - though as time goes on, the issue fades in importance. According to the Gallup poll, the percentage of Americans who believe there will be further acts of terrorism on US soil has steadily declined, from 51 percent in July 2004 to 35 percent in June 2005.

I guess if you think the so-called "war on terrorism" is over, that last statistic would be good news.  Otherwise, it's just one more sign of how badly the Iraq War has distracted the US from a focus on jihadist terrorism.

A central question is whether Bush and other top officials can talk their way into more public support. "There might be a short-term bump," says John Mueller, an expert on war and public opinion at Ohio State University. "But there aren't any new arguments he can troop out. We've heard them a thousand times."

But the latest PR campaign might turn out like this earlier presidential attempt to boost public support for an unpopular war, described by Jeffrey Record in The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (1998):

The Johnson administration made no serious effort to galvanize public support for the war until the second half of 1967, when it sought to counter increasing popular dismay by unleashing a flood of rosy—and highly misleading—official pronouncements on the war'* progress, a campaign that was fatally embarrassed by the Tet Offensive [in 1968].

By the time of Nixon's inauguration in January 1969, there was little sentiment for a military victory, which most Americans no longer believed was attainable at an acceptable cost, but rather a desire for the war's termination.  In fact, the United States was headed for a major debacle in Vietnam with potentially disastrous political and international repercussions.

But the Halliburton Republicans got the war in Iraq they insisted on having.  Whether it's looking to them like the glorious war of liberation they envisioned is anyone's guess.  So far, they've shown a remarkable capacity for self-delusion on all things related to the Iraq War.

And we're winning, okay?  We're definitely winning.  We've been winning for some time.  Gen. Myers said so.  And what loyal patriotic American would dare to question a general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Funny, though, that Monitor article doesn't mention anything about Bush's dramatic appeal for volunteers to fight in Iraq that will surely be part of his address on Tuesday.